I'm dead tired! You would not believe me1 I have a class of 7-12 years-old boys & they are driving me crazy! I spare a lot of energy in their class that when I get home, the only think I can do is to collapse on bed & sleep!
Some of them are really quick & despite their age they learn really fast. However there are not so fast students in my class & when I'm working with them, the other party (the quick students) get bored & you know the rest.... I've a student who does gymnastic practice in my classroom!
I'm not sure what I have gotten myself into... it seems that I'm not a good a teacher. I mean I do fine with my quick students but with the rest... well, it's not easy to be tolerant when you try to teach them "hello! Hello! How are you? I'm fine, thank you & you..." & they don’t get it! My class-agenda was to complete the 'Greeting' & the concept of boy & girl & teacher & student & I should have told them the rules of the class... by the end of session tow, I still had to teach the teacher/student concept! So I decided to add the class time & ask weaker students to come to make-up class.
I hope this would work.
Well... I really had to go to bed now. Wish me luck.
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
Whoever said teaching is easy?
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2 comments:
Sometimes when you have a class with some really quick students and some not so quick students, a technique you can use is to break the students into small groups and then have the quick students do the teaching. Get the quick students to teach the slower students.
Another technique is the "jigsaw classroom" which also has the students in various groups. Here is a website about that = http://www.jigsaw.org/
Good Luck, Proshat! Think of how you are molding the future. That is wonderful :)
Hi Proshat,
It has been 20 years since I retired from teaching high school Social Studies, but I can still get tired just thinking about those days!
Is your class completely spoken, or do they do some written work as well? If they do written work then it is a good idea to always give them just a little bit more work than they can possibly do in the time allotted. If your class does all oral work then having them sing might be a good strategy. In group singing there are no slower or faster kids. I would strongly suggest english songs from 50 or 100 years ago rather than anything recent.
I have tried the methods that Lynne suggested. I have to say that I had very little success with them in my classrooms. Some methods work in some cultures and not in others. Something that might work in one part of the city may not work in another part of the same city. A friend of mine has been teaching in Taiwan for several years and he tells me that the students there are much better behaved, and more studious than in North America, or in Greece where he has also taught. Another friend taught in England for one year and had a nervous breakdown because she found her students to be totally uncooperative and unmanageable, no matter what method she tried.
The bottom line is that you have to do what works in your own classroom. Have these boys been taught at home to be respectful of teachers and other older people? Would they be unruly if they had a male teacher? I know that some boys, even in North America and England do not have any respect for female teachers. I started teaching in 1948. I have found that most students will "try out" a new teacher just for the fun of it. They will try to see how much nonsense they can get away with, and just how much it takes to make the new teacher lose her or his composure.
I have had many hundreds of students between 1947 and 1982 and every one was just a little bit different from all of the others. This is why I would never attempt to tell you what to do in your classroom. There is one thing that all good teachers soon learn, though. That is that there can only be one master in any classroom. The master will either be the teacher or one of the students. If you can identify the student leader and get him to help you, then most of your troubles will be gone.
Good luck young lady. Your Canadian grandpa will pray for your success!
Grandpa Doral
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